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It’s 1:00 am where I live– in Wisconsin, we’re on Central Time. (Ugh, Central Time… I honestly never thought I’d live somewhere where the CST of the “Tomorrow at 9 PM EST/8 PM CST” from my Cartoon Network watching days of yore would actually apply to me. But here we are!!) I was born in Michigan in 1984, on Eastern Time, somewhere around 2:00 am. This is pretty close right? (Thank goodness for scheduled posting! I’m 30 now, my bed time comes way before midnight!)

My parents tell me the night I was born was a pretty icy night. When I first learned to read, I thought I-C-Y was pronounced “icky” and that made for some really confusing road signs, but at the same time, it’s fitting. It’s an icky icy night here tonight, Mother Nature promising another 5 inches or so of the fluffy white stuff. History repeats itself, eh?

All of that was 30 years ago now and despite all the fanfare, I’m feeling quiet tonight as I welcome the big three-o. I spent my Advent for Thirty reflecting on hope, peace, joy, and love. What started as an exercise targeted toward generating blog material and a time for making jokes about turning 30 ended up being something really, really good for me. And it really did ready my heart, mind, and soul for thirty. How very advent-ageous, if you will. (Bahahahaaaahaaa! Oh, puns!)

Now it’s here. Thirty is upon us. Well, me. And some of you, no doubt. But mostly me right now. I’m looking forward to the flood of Facebook love (seriously, Facebook really makes birthdays a thousand times better, doesn’t it?!), phone calls and text messages, and some birthday cake (tomorrow and on Saturday when Seth’s parents are coming to celebrate with me!).

Tonight, we’re staying in. I’m making salmon (it’s a new recipe and I’m using dill I dried from my friend Aimie’s garden and some cabbage I froze from my mother-in-law’s! so exciting!) and we’re going to snuggle up with our pup and watch some Harry Potter. Seth got me ALL EIGHT MOVIES on BluRay for my birthday (whaaaaaaat?! you know your husband loves you when…) and I’m pretty pumped to see them on our enormous tv downstairs. On one hand, I kind of want to start with the first, but given that I won’t have enough time to watch them all tomorrow, I’m kind of tempted to start with The Goblet of Fire (that’s number four for those of you who are not Harry Potter maniacs like me) because I loved that one so much– it was so… intense! Regardless of where we start, my in-laws (and all of them conspired on this one!) got me HERMIONE’S WAND from Olivander’s Wand Shop at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter for Christmas when we were there back in October and you know I’ll be practicing during the movie. (Bob says he’s always wanted to levitate so it’s important to me to perfect that spell before they come over on Saturday to eat cake with me– it’s wingardium leviOsa not wingardium leviosA!) That’s a reasonable way to spend the day you turn 30, right?

Thanks a ton for sticking around with me for my Advent for Thirty series and for being here tonight as 30 strikes. An especially big thanks for joining in on my Whoville-style chorus of welcome 30:

"Rachel V. Stankowski considered herself, among other things, a writer. Primarily due to the positive stigmas that accompanied the label, but also because it seemed to excuse some of her more major eccentricities, vanity included."
My brother, also a writer, wrote that about a fictional character. It might have been about me. So I stole it. He's good; maybe I can be too.